At $58,000, a 580 hp supercar for the rest of us

By David Booth, Postmedia News

Originally published: January 25, 2012

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MEDIUM

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Chandler, Ariz. • Nothing frightens autojournalists more than the nondescript. Awful is better than mediocre. We can work with terrible or excellent in equal measure and neither the sublime nor the ridiculous scare us. Just don’t give us bland.

Hell, then, is a subcompact wagon with a 110-horsepower engine and a tan-on-beige paint job. There is no “it,” no attention-grabbing superlative that is both the car’s raison d’être and our easily discerned headline.

Chevrolet’s new Camaro ZL1 has exactly the opposite problem — a vast plethora of attention grabbers, each worthy of front-page coverage. Should I lead off with its purported 580 horsepower, an above-the-fold headline no matter how little you care about performance cars? Should I tease with its seven-minute 41.27-second time around the world-famous Nürburgring, the circuit in Germany that is now the benchmark for fast cars? Or do I lead with the more pedestrian but equally exciting fact that a Canadian ZL1 will cost only $58,000, a seeming pittance of a markup from the $37,735 SS version and — perhaps even more important to Canadians used to scanning for U.S. bargains — barely seven per cent above the US$54,095 sticker price south of the border?

What’s surprising, however, is despite those noteworthy numbers, the most surprising aspect of the new Camaro is its sophistication. Despite its relatively lowly Camaro lineage, miserly price tag and cartoonish movie roles, the ZL1 is a bona fide supercar.

Yes, I am as surprised as you are. Indeed, upon perusing the ZL1’s spec sheet (particularly its 1,900-kilogram curb weight), I expected a car that was simply an SS with a bit more power — fun to spin the tires but not the sort of thing you’d want to spend any time flinging around a race track.

Instead, the ZL1 turns out to be a veritable track weapon. Besides the obvious — and 580 hp certainly qualifies as obvious — the real reason for the ZL1’s exemplary performance is the latest Gen III Magnetic Ride suspension system and its twin of computerized road-hugging malfeasance, the all-new Performance Traction Management (PTM) traction control system. As incredible as it may seem, the two combine to render the rather portly Camaro into a rapier-like road rocket.

The ZL1’s Gen III system, like earlier Magnetic Ride systems, uses a unique magneto-rheological fluid that alters its viscosity in response to an electrical signal. Essentially, if you feed the fluid some electricity, it gets thicker — as in water to molasses — in the blink of an eye. This allows Chevy’s engineers to almost instantly alter the suspension performance by computer. One second the ZL1 — thanks to comparatively soft springs and wimpy stabilizer bars — is a model of decorum. In the next, the suspension is Formula One rigid, all because an ECU sent the dampers a few milliamps of current. The new two-coil, two-wire dampers react so quickly, says Alex MacDonald, Chevrolet’s chassis control development engineer, that it’s possible to tailor the car’s tendency to under- or oversteer just by sending current to the dampers. MacDonald claims the system is so powerful that, in its design phase, the ZL1 could be transformed from an understeering pig to an oversteering hooligan with just a few keystrokes from a laptop.

Throw in what is possibly the automotive world’s most sophisticated traction control system — the aforementioned PTM — and you have one of the most easily controlled high-performance cars on the planet. PTM offers five positions of digital intervention, all the way from a “wet” setting for playing silly bugger in the rain to the full-zoot Track mode that race driver Aaron Link used to set that scalding Nürburgring time (yes, even the experts are faster with an electronic traction nanny, as long as it is suitably calibrated).

MacDonald also says the PTM differs from other traction control systems by being predictive; it can actually reduce power before the wheels lose traction rather than after as is more common for electronic stability control systems. The result, says MacDonald, is that the ZL1 suffers none of the herky-jerky slide and catch that lesser systems suffer as they try to regain traction after the fact.

The system works brilliantly. A little intrusive in its normal No. 2 position (especially in automatic-equipped models, which programs in a little more safety), there’s a noticeable delay on exiting corners at full throttle. Move up to position four, however, and response feels as immediate as a race car. The back end drifts on command and, yet, no matter how silly you get, the PTM seems to rein you in before you get into oh-my-Lord-where-did-that-guardrail-come-from trouble.

Indeed, the ZL1 has few faults, the Magnetic Ride keeping the car flat even under the high-lateral g-force turns at the end of Bob Bondurant’s Firebird Raceway. The sticky (and almost treadless) 20-inch Goodyear Supercar F1s offered plenty of traction and the PTM system kept understeer in check. Even roiling through the track’s high-speed ess turns failed to upset the plot, the big Camaro feeling more like a lithe Lotus when flip-flopping between apexes. Indeed, only in the slowest of first-gear switchbacks does the car’s 1,900 kg overwhelm the Goodyears and push the front end a little wide. The ZL1 is formidable.

How formidable? That 7:41.27 Nürburgring test time I mentioned earlier sees the ZL1 ahead of Porsche’s mighty 911 GT3 piloted by none other than ’Ring legend Walter Röhrl, as well as the insane (read very expensive) Pagani Zonda S — and less than a second behind Lamborghini’s mighty Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera. This might be a good time to remind everyone that, yes, I really am talking about a Camaro that costs $58,000.

Of course, part of the reason for the ZL1’s incredible speed is its monster supercharged 6.2-litre V8. Based on the same basic block and Eaton blower as in the Corvette ZR1 and Cadillac CTS-V, the Camaro’s 580 horses neatly splits the difference between the two, being 58 fewer than the over-the-top Vette but 24 more than the M5-trouncing rapid Caddy. In truth, it is the 556 pound-feet of torque that matter more. Indeed, so massive is the low-end grunt pumped out by the supercharger that I opted for the six-speed automatic version when romping around the race track. No matter what losses the slushbox’s torque convertor might engender, the big 6.2L had more than enough to cover it. In fact, according to GM, the automatic is actually quicker, romping to 96 kilometres an hour in just 3.9 seconds, a tenth quicker than the manual. The automatic is also faster at the top end, its 297 km/h speed seven km/h more than the six-speed manual.

The engine barks like the real McCoy as well. The exhaust system has a cut-out to let all those horses breathe — as is common these days. But even more mesmerizing is the throttle limiter, which kicks in as you exceed top revs. That’s when the ignition cut-out’s staccato beat makes the ZL1 sound like a Le Mans race car at the end of the Mulsanne Straight.

It all adds up to one of the biggest surprise in recent years — a mid-priced Canadian-built sports car that is as trackworthy as the best from Europe or Japan. Yes, the interior still looks like it fell out of a Chevette and quite why Chevrolet makes a car that can generate 1.0 g of lateral cornering force (within spitting distance of the Corvette ZR1, by the way) and then stints on the seats’ side bolstering is beyond my ken. Nonetheless, this may be the best track day bandit you can buy for $58,000.

And, just to make that point all the more poignant, in deeming its new car “track capable,” Chevrolet is extending the Camaro’s warranty to track day bandits. Yes, even if something breaks — halfshafts, engine, transmission, etc. — while you beating the Holy-mother-of-you-know-what out of your ZL1 on a track, Chevrolet will cover it under the normal warranty. The only way you can void it is to make non-approved modifications (and, be forewarned, GM will find out). For those of us of middle-class means looking for a supercar we can afford to abuse, this is as good as it gets.